SK

Principal Software Engineer (remote)

Salary
€90K–€140K
EUR per year
Hiring from
Probably Worldwide
Work type
Remote
Posted
Sep 27, 2026
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Welcome to SkillLab

At SkillLab, we envision a world where everyone has a pathway to employment. We enable and lead a radical change - a transition towards skill-based labor and education markets. As a B2G company, our primary clients are government entities, mainly public employment services. Our AI-driven technology creates more inclusive and efficient markets by connecting people with jobs and education through the universal language of skills. SkillLab seeks to transform labor and education markets globally.

Startup Culture & Mindset

We are an established company that still operates with an authentic startup culture—hands-on, pragmatic, and highly autonomous. The ideal candidate is excited about the financial upside and dynamism of a startup environment (including stock appreciation rights), feels aligned with our social mission, and enjoys working in a high-impact B2G context. If you love getting stuff done independently while staying a tight-knit team player, you’ll fit right in.

Making a real impact

As a Principal Software Engineer at SkillLab, your architectural leadership and code will directly power employment services helping millions of job seekers around the globe find dignified work, overcome barriers to employment, and map out their future careers.

Your team

You will join our engineering team as the new Principal Software Engineer. You'll work alongside a growing team of product managers, UX designers, QA, and data scientists, building and scaling our B2G employment platform.
Our current engineering team is small with just two other full-time Staff+ level engineers. We are hiring out the core group to 4 or 5 in the coming months. This team will handle the application core, a SaaS deployment for smaller clients and major client source releases every few weeks.

We occasionally work with staff augmentation and client integration partners. In each case Interacting with a few people directly at most. You will be asked to direct the work of at most two people at the start. This is primarily an IC job, expect to be hands-on and full stack with the majority of your time shipping features. In addition to the IC work, you would directly interact with the engineering teams of our clients.

Our on-prem clients have their own devops teams and handle infra but we advise based on data from the field. Our SDLC process is as robust as we want it to be. Previously with human-written business requirements, design documents, full automated test coverage, AI and static code analysis, manual core review, and human acceptance testing. Our industry is evolving to a leaner process however and we want you to help us shape our version of it.

We are proud of the people we collaborate with and excited to work at a company with a strong social mission. We hope you will be too!

Our Tech Stack

  • Backend: Ruby on Rails, Python
  • Frontend: TypeScript, React (Progressive Web Applications, RTL support)
  • Database & Storage: PostgreSQL, Redis, ElasticSearch / Solr
  • AI & Data: LLMs, Vector Databases, Natural Language Search Engines
  • DevOps & Infra: Kubernetes, Docker, modern CI/CD automation pipelines

Your responsibilities

  • Architect & Deliver Solutions: Lead technical design, architectural planning, and hands-on delivery for complex B2G client implementations, partnering with product managers, UX, QA, and data science to expand our application ecosystem.
  • Feature & Platform Development: Work across Ruby on Rails, Python, and TypeScript/React to design and implement secure, scalable product features—including Progressive Web Applications with localization and right-to-left (RTL) support.
  • Customer Integration & Collaboration: Serve as a primary technical interface with external customer teams and technical leaders, enabling integrations, gathering requirements, and traveling on-site (maximum 1–2 trips per month) for working sessions.
  • AI & Search Integration: Build robust, secure interactions with vendor-provided LLMs, in-house AI models, vector databases, and natural language search engines.
  • Infrastructure & System Reliability: Drive release management, modern CI/CD automation pipelines, Kubernetes orchestration, and PostgreSQL query/performance optimization.
  • Quality & Engineering Culture: Write comprehensive test coverage, maintain API documentation, mentor team members, and help scale engineering workflows and hiring processes.

Requirements

Your skills

  • Experience: 8+ years of web development experience with deep expertise in Ruby on Rails.
  • Frontend Knowledge: Proven ability to read, write, and contribute pull requests to TypeScript/React applications.
  • Languages: English proficiency required. Arabic fluency/speaking capability is highly preferred to support key stakeholders across our client base in the region.
  • DevOps & Infrastructure: Hands-on experience with modern CI/CD automation pipelines, release management, and container orchestration using Kubernetes in production.
  • Databases & Data Stores: Strong expertise in PostgreSQL (including query optimization) along with experience in document stores (ElasticSearch/Solr), key-value stores (Redis), or background queueing systems.
  • Pragmatic AI Usage: A balanced, practical approach to leveraging AI—knowing when to write code from scratch, when to use AI coding partners, and when full agentic loops add real value.
  • Agile & Customer Orientation: Comfortable operating from high-level problem statements in a fast-paced agile environment, with a strong passion for engaging directly with external technical leaders.

Extra awesome

  • Prior experience delivering B2G (Business-to-Government) applications or multi-tenant enterprise platforms.
  • Hands-on experience with vector databases, LLM integrations, or natural language search.
  • Experience designing for complex RTL (Right-to-Left) localization requirements.

What We Offer

  • Location & Employment: Open to candidates residing in Europe, Middle East and Gulf States time zones. You will be contracted locally via an Employer of Record (EOR).
  • Work Setup: Fully remote with flexible hours and asynchronous scheduling.
  • Hardware: Full hardware package provided.
  • Salary: Expected annual gross salary between €90,000 – €140,000 per year (benchmarked against the Dutch high-tech sector, including 8% holiday allowance). Remote salary offers are adjusted based on local market benchmarks.
  • Equity: Offer includes Stock Appreciation Rights (SARs) vesting over a 4-year period, including a 1-year cliff, and with company sale as payout trigger.
  • Travel: Willingness to travel for short trips (ranging from a few days to a week) to Amsterdam and international client sites as needed (approximately 1–2 trips per month). International travel is planned in advance and fully covered via company credit cards.
  • Start Date: We accept applications on a rolling basis, with a target start date as soon as possible.

Our Selection Process

  • CV Screening: Initial review of your background and experience.
  • Skills & Written Assessment: Additional skills assessment and questions once passed successfully.
  • Interviews: In-depth tech & culture interviews.

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